“Boo-Boo Pennyroyal did not like her male and female slaves to mingle. In the operas that she adored, young people brought together in tragic circumstances were forever falling in love with each other and then throwing themselves off things (cliffs, mostly, but sometimes battlements, or rooftops, or the brinks of volcanoes). Boo-Boo was fond of her slaves, and it pained her to think of them plummeting in pairs off the edges of Cloud 9, so she nipped all tragic love affairs firmly in the bud by forbidding the girls and boys to speak to one another. Of course, young people being what they were, girls sometimes fell in love with other girls, or boys with boys, but that never happened in the operas, so Boo-Boo didn't notice.”

“Boo: "Go talk to her."Callum: "About what?"Boo: "Anything."Callum: "You want me to walk up to her and say, 'Are you a ghost?'"Boo: "I do that."Callum: "I love it when you get it wrong.”

“Boo-hoo. Help me, I'm a girl. What kind of modern woman are you? A smart one.”

“I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother'sPTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina,and led right to me."She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.”

“While I was drying off Maddie after her bath tonight, she said, 'I love you' to me for the first time. It sounded like 'All lub boo,' but I didn't care. To reciprocate, I showed her what an ex-Marine looks like when he cries.”

“Because Cards' fans are the most knowledgeable and loyal in all of baseball, they booed almost reluctantly, polite as booing goes, what would have passes as a standing ovation in Philly.”